eucatastrophe n. eucatastrophic [ < Gr. eu, "good" and catastrophe Coined by JRR Tolkien.] 1. (in a narrative) The event that shifts the balance in favor of the protagonist when all seems lost. 2. A happy ending.

September 2010

09/29/2010

Write These Laws on your Children: Inside the World of
conservative Christian Homeschooling

Robert Kunzman, a former public school teacher who presently
teaches college education courses in Indiana
devotes two years to immersing himself in the lives of six different
conservative Christian homeschool families scattered across the country. His
observations provide experiential access to those who would like to know more
about what they are debating when they debate issues relating to the
conservative homeschool movement.

My take on Kunzman is that he is a fair man whose intent is
to serve as an observer more than a judge. One walks away from the book
believing that they have experienced conservative Christian homeschooling for
what it is. As Henry David Thoreau puts it in Walden,

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately,
to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it
had to teach, . . . I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life,
to live so sturdily and Spartan- like as to put to rout all that was not life,
to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce
it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole
and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it
were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of
it in my next excursion.”

I obviously cannot declare that all the children who
comprise the focus of this study are being well served or poorly served. There
are of course costs and benefits. I can say that many if not most of the
children that he observes are not being given an opportunity to chose between
numerous ways of seeing the world. This is not to say that kids in public or
private schools are. Ultimately, the school system can be a monolithic place of
indoctrination as much or more powerful than an isolated family.

Certainly many home schooled children in conservative
Christian homes are being allowed to consider multiple points of view. Are they
put in a situation where those other points of view get a fair fight? Probably
not. Should they? I will let the reader decide.

A good book for anyone interested in seeing where the
groundwork for future cultural conflict is being laid down.

Question for Comment: When is the first time in your
educational life where you can remember being given a free choice between
competing world views and one of them was not what you were raised with?

Yeah. Get this movie. But don’t stop there. Temple Grandin
is an impact player in the world of perception, education, and animals. She has
a lot to say (The list of her books proves it): The movie Temple Grandinjust shows you a little about where she
learned what she has to say.

This is one of those movies I would love to be able to hand
out for Halloween candy. And I think if I ever got to do a documentary, it
would be interesting to look at what all the people who laughed at Temple growing up have
done with their lives. Sort of a “what’s so special about you?” piece maybe. Temple’s
achievements just go to show that sometimes being different is an asset. As the
T-Shirt that Simeon likes puts it, “You laugh at me because I am different. I
laugh at you because you are all the same.”

What is the point of the documentary and the movie? I think
it has something to do with how important it is to a person and to the
community in which they live not to give up on making connection happen. It is
a LOT of work for people with Autism to stay
connected to the world. And it is a lot of work for the world to keep them
connected. But all the work can really be worth it. Temple Grandin’s
life shows just how much both sides can benefit in happiness if they will do
that work.

I suspect that this
is true of every person if it is true of autistic children.

Again, the irony is that research on the brains of people with
autism shows that what is causing the symptoms is a lack of “normal” connection
between different parts of the brain that normally are in close communication
with each other.In a way, this is their gift and curse. The part of the brain that tells a person that a small detail is not important or worth noticing is simply not being heard. So an autistic person notices everything. If you want someone in a job that notices everything, then hire an autistic person. It is that simple.

Question for Comment: Is it work for you to stay connected
to social groups? If it is easy for you to connect and stay connected to human
communities, what is difficult for you?

09/26/2010

"I try to write the books I would love to come upon,
that are honest, concerned with real lives, human hearts, spiritual
transformation, families, secrets, wonder, craziness—and that can make me
laugh. When I am reading a book like this, I feel rich and profoundly relieved
to be in the presence of someone who will share the truth with me, and throw
the lights on a little, and I try to write these kinds of books. Books, for me,
are medicine." Anne Lamott

I have a confession. I have generally thought that the more
intelligent a person is, the more articulate, the more capable of knowing and
articulating their inner selves, and the more able to read and learn from
others they are – the less dysfunctional their lives are likely to be. But this
is not always so. And sometimes it is just refreshing to read an
autobiographical work by someone who is all of the above but who has a life of
experiences that mirrors the lives of millions of people who go from tragedy to
drama to tragedy without being able to give voice to what it is like.

Anne Lamott knows what it is like to be lost, to be an alcoholic,
to be a struggling broke bolemic single mom, to be adrift in a sea of dysfunction. But
she knows how to describe it with sharp wit, irony, literary allusions, and
profoundness at times. Traveling Mercies:
Some Thoughts on Faith is like reading a contemporary Augustine’s Confessions. It is not so much like John Newton’s “I
was lost but now I’m found. Was blind but now I see.” It is more like “I was
lost but now I am finding myself, Was blind and now I sometimes see.” Its
honest, transparent, visceral, human, real.

Like Augustine, her journey into a life of faith is not some
sort of journey into a life of perfection. And it involved a series of
transitional moves "... a series of staggers from what seemed like one
safe place to another. Like lily pads, round and green, these places summoned
and then held me up while I grew." She describes her spiritual life as a mélange
of unassimilated ideas. "Mine was a patchwork God,” she says, “sewn
together from bits of rag and ribbon, Eastern and Western, pagan and Hebrew,
everything but the kitchen sink and Jesus."

I think what she wants to give her readers is what she says
that she wants to give her son. “I want to give him what I found in the world,
which is to say a path and a little light to see by. Most of the people who
have what I want – which is to say purpose, balance, heart, gratitude, joy –
are people with a deep sense of spirituality. They are people in community who
pray or practice their faith … They follow a brighter light than the glimmer of
their own candle; They are part of something beautiful. I saw something once
from the Jewish Theological Seminary that said, “A human life is like a single
letter of the alphabet. It can be meaningless. Or it can be a part of great
meaning.”

“We are here to endure the beams of love,” she says, quoting
the words of William Blake. Like lizards who fear the pain of bright light in
their eyes too much to come out and be warmed, she uses this book to expose
herself to the world, the parts she is proud of and the parts that she isn’t.
And in so doing, places herself in the path of those beams of love which, it
seams, shine equally down upon us in our human entirety. “God isn’t there to
take away our suffering or our pain,” she writes,” but to fill it with His or
Her presence.”

Question for Comment: What is the most transparent you have ever been with people you do not know?

09/25/2010

Letters to Juliet
has all the ingredients for a classic romantic movie. Where do we start?

It is
set mostly in Tuscany.
Indeed, the plot line demands that the main characters drive around Tuscany looking for
a 50 year lost love named Lorenzo Bartolini.

The
plot line involves the intertwining of a fifty year old love affair in
search of resolution and a brand new budding love affair in search of the
light of day.

The
principle love interest is pretty and the two men she must decide between
are both handsome foreigners (an Italian chef who loves the tastes of
wines and cheeses and breads and pastries on the one hand and a well-off
British lawyer who defends defenseless immigrants and poor people on the
other). Both look good in bathing suits by the way and can speak some
Italian.

Everything
in the plot revolves around the world’s greatest romance, Romeo and Juliet so its
completely situated in a context of romance already.

The
fundamental principles of the Romantic Era are never violated. All
protagonists must wrestle with the question of the supremacy of the emotional
attachment reflex but they come around to the right conclusion eventually.
The key to a romantic movie is that it must play out LIKE Romeo and Juliette
but there must be another scene AFTER the two kill themselves in the
Capulet mortuary where they get up and say “just kidding. We aren’t dead.”

I can find no flaw with this movie as a formula. It is
simply perfect. Indeed. I even forgave the principle characters for kissing one
another in spite of “Julliets” previous engagement (ringless though it was).

In a nut shell, an American writer finds a fifty year old
letter in the stones of Juliet’s house in Verona.
It is a letter of regret written by a woman named Claire who chickened out of a
relationship with a man named Lorenzo she deeply cared about because of some
family pressure. On an impulse, the American writer, writes a letter to Claire
and inspires her to go on a mission to discover what happened to her beau. Here is
the text of that letter.

Dear Claire,

What and If are two words as
non-threatening as words can be. But put them together side-by-side and they
have the power to haunt you for the rest of your life: What if? What if? What
if? I don't know how your story ended but if what you felt then was true love,
then it's never too late. If it was true then, why wouldn't it be true now? You
need only the courage to follow your heart. I don't know what a love like
Juliet's feels like - love to leave loved ones for, love to cross oceans for
but I'd like to believe if I ever were to feel it, that I will have the courage
to seize it. And, Claire, if you didn't, I hope one day that you will.

09/23/2010

One is reminded over and over again in this story that one
does not have to understand why things happen to people in order to love them.
And one does not have to figure out why some miracles don’t happen to accept
that some do. Peace Like a River is about
a family that accepts its challenges,
looks for assets to help them meet them, be they human or divine, and loves one
another as they love themselves through the process.

Watching the Land family deal with Reuben’s Asthma, Swede’s
charisma, Davy’s “crime” and their Father’s loneliness is a sheer treat. I was reminded of Robert Frost’s poem, Storm Fear:

When the wind works against us in the dark,
And pelts with snow
The lowest chamber window on the east,
And whispers with a sort of stifled bark,
The beast,
'Come out! Come out!'-
It costs no inward struggle not to go,
Ah, no!
I count our strength,
Two and a child,
Those of us not asleep subdued to mark
How the cold creeps as the fire dies at length,-
How drifts are piled,
Dooryard and road ungraded,
Till even the comforting barn grows far away
And my heart owns a doubt
Whether 'tis in us to arise with day
And save ourselves unaided.

Good read. It was passed on to me as such and I pass it on to others
with the same high recommendation.

09/15/2010

The Last Station gives an intimate portrayal of the last
days of Leo Tolstoy. Brilliant acting brings together a chaotic symphony of
competing human relational forces that strive to have their way with us all.
Leo Tolstoy was a man committed to ideas and to ideals. His wife of some 48
years is deeply attached to him and he to her but she does not share his same
commitment to his ideals. And indeed, he does not even share the same
commitment to his own ideals that many of his followers have. Ironically, some
of his followers believe that because the ideals that they subscribe to were
given to them by Tolstoy, that this somehow gives them ownership of Tolstoy.

For many people who, like myself, often find themselves
loving ideas and liking people, Tolstoy suffers from the need to be loved more
than his own ideas. And this is the central conflict of the film I think. There
is a battle for Tolstoy’s deepest affections being waged between those that
love HIM and those that love his IDEAS. Between the principle promoter of “Tolstoyan”
ideology and Tolstoy’s own wife. Both, at times, feel betrayed. Both, at times,
feel threatened.

As Leo Tolstoy’s life comes to end, there are those who seek
primarily to protect the ideas. Who “love Tolstoy” by wanting to see him die
uncompromised – an icon to his own ideals if you will. While Tolstoy himself
admits that he is not the best Tolstoyan, these supporters would have him be an
icon. There are also those, his wife primarily, who simply loves the man. Who love him even
though they deeply and profoundly disagree with his ideas. And in the middle, a
central character, who finds himself caught in the riptide of love for both the
man and his ideas.

Question for Comment: Have
you ever given up a cause or a dream or an ideal for the love of a person? Or a
person for the love of a cause, a dream, or an ideal? Which do you think the
greater sin? Or is neither?

09/03/2010

Fanda feels alive when he is pulling pranks and acting
immature. Unfortunately threatens everything, including his marriage. And well
it might. He is in his late 70’s. His wife of some forty some odd years is insistent
that he “grow up” and prepare himself to die. She is focused on lining up a
grave for them and getting their financial house in order. In many different
ways, she asserts that their lives are no longer as valuable as the lives of
their son. To her, they are in their last days and last days are less worth
living than early ones.

To Fanda, there is no reason not to look at the last days as
the days most full of promise. After all, how much serious trouble can an
eighty year old man get into? What threats can be made against them if they are
rascals and he sets out to enjoy his life with his best friend only to find
that it drives his wife to end the marriage.

And thus he agrees to reform. Which, seen for what it is,
amounts to an agreement to die. He forswears his geriatric delinquency and, in
the great irony of the movie, begins to drive his wife crazy by doing so. Here
is the relevant exchange. “You don’t talk, don’t drink, don’t sing, don’t quarrel”
she complains, “I can’t stand it anymore.”

“I wanted to please you.” He says.

“Please me? What happened to you? I
married a cheerful man with crazy ideas with whom I argued all day and nowadays
you sit here like a living corpse. Like some dope that doesn’t care that I am
unhappy that I can’t live like this.”

And in a delightful twist of the plot, she sets out to learn
how to play pranks with him.

There is an old man who throughout the movie stares out at
the world and life and does nothing. As Fanda and his wife set out to play a
prank at the end of the movie, she notes that the old man sat there for three
days after he had died and no one noticed.

“He was dead even when he was alive,” says Fanda, making it
clear that so long as the wife who loves him will join him, he will not make
the same mistake.

Question for Comment: Do you think you will be more full of
life as you age? Or less? Why?